Kyle Bobby Dunn: Pour les octaves
Peasant Magik

The tone of Kyle Bobby Dunn's Pour les octaves is very much in the spirit of the double-CD 2010 release The Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point). With two becalmed pieces split across the cassette's two sides, Pour les octaves feels in some measure like the earlier release distilled into miniature form, even though Pour les octaves' material was composed and arranged by Dunn for PSR (a portable keyboard) and guitar during 2004-05 (and therefore presumably before the Low Point release).

Regardless, the cassette's material is every bit as lovely. Pitched at low volume, side A's “PSR Music for Jennifer Schull” interlaces graceful synthetic swells and minimal guitar elements for seventeen immersive minutes; tones rise and fall in breath-like manner until the guitar presence disappears, leaving the softly shimmering chords to build into a crescendo of sorts that wavers in place for several minutes. The even gentler “Remnants” unspools for twelve serenading minutes on the flip side with the soft ebb and flow of organ-like melodies the primary sound—until, that is, a bell-like tone appears two-thirds of the way in. By way of compliment, one notes that at times during this release, Dunn's sound—and even the Pour les octaves title—could very easily be mistaken for Celer.

January 2011